The State of Prototyping Practice in the Industrial Setting: Potential, Challenges and Implications

Prototyping as a central method within innovation- and product development processes has a high acceptance in industry. Various prototyping tools provide impressive visualizations of product ideas in early development stages and especially low fidelity prototyping methods seem easily applicable. However, a closer look at prototyping in practice reveals a number of misunderstandings and barriers regarding effective prototyping, often related to different stakeholders’ (e.g., developer, designer, client) ideas about the purpose of prototyping. Based on a combination of literature analysis, adapting existing models and methods in user centered design (e.g., personas, double diamond design process) and empirical results from industrial research cooperation, we introduce a focus group format and a first model of prototyping maturity, which can help organizations to reflect on their state of practice in prototyping on an individual, team, and organizational level. The maturity model also forms a valuable theoretical lens for design research. Thus, our research aims at researchers in the field of prototyping as well as practitioners involved in prototyping and innovation processes

Nurse’s Knowledge and Practice on the Care of Preterm Infants at Khartoum State Hospitals

Background: Premature infants can develop a range of problems because their immature organs. A proper nursing care for a premature baby should be established through good nursing performances. This study aimed to assess nurse's knowledge and practices regarding the care of a premature baby in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Methods: This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study, with a systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data that reports a clear picture of a particular situation carried out by 72 eligible nurses who were a graduate in BSc., and had at least six months' experience at the time of the study. Result: The study showed that the percentage of nurse’s knowledge regarding care of premature; definition of preterm neonate 44.4%, nurses’ had poor knowledge, umbilical vessels: Two arteries &one vein 40.3 %, nurses’ had poor knowledge, and the percentage of nurses’ practices regarding care of premature baby; hand washing o 36.1 %, nurses’ have poor practice, so there were poor nurses’ knowledge and practices regarding care of premature baby

Emergent state practice on the creation and practice of standards on corporate social responsibility

This article examines the emerging State practice on the evolving corporate social responsibility (CSR) standard. It examines its public international law instruments and particularly analyses the role of States in the development of CSR norms and the potential of these norms to impact the recognition, promotion and protection of human rights. The article also assesses the UN effort to consolidate the standards that have emerged from soft law instruments in public international law, focusing on the Ruggie’s process and its potential impact on the future development of the law and practice in this area. The article shows an emerging convergence of standards and practices and coherence on certain themes that could ultimately lead to the establishment of stronger international norms on CSR. A key example is human rights standards for corporations regarding their activities in host States

Preliminary findings from a survey on the MD state of the practice

In the context of an Italian research project, this paper reports on an on-line survey, performed with 155 software professionals, with the aim of investigating about their opinions and experiences in modeling during software development and Model-driven engineering usage. The survey focused also on used modeling languages, processes and tools. A preliminary analysis of the results confirmed that Model-driven engineering, and more in general software modeling, are very relevant phenomena. Approximately 68% of the sample use models during software development. Among then, 44% generate code starting from models and 16% execute them directly. The preferred language for modeling is UML but DSLs are used as wel

SentiBench - a benchmark comparison of state-of-the-practice sentiment analysis methods

In the last few years thousands of scientific papers have investigated sentiment analysis, several startups that measure opinions on real data have emerged and a number of innovative products related to this theme have been developed. There are multiple methods for measuring sentiments, including lexical-based and supervised machine learning methods. Despite the vast interest on the theme and wide popularity of some methods, it is unclear which one is better for identifying the polarity (i.e., positive or negative) of a message. Accordingly, there is a strong need to conduct a thorough apple-to-apple comparison of sentiment analysis methods, \textit{as they are used in practice}, across multiple datasets originated from different data sources. Such a comparison is key for understanding the potential limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of popular methods. This article aims at filling this gap by presenting a benchmark comparison of twenty-four popular sentiment analysis methods (which we call the state-of-the-practice methods). Our evaluation is based on a benchmark of eighteen labeled datasets, covering messages posted on social networks, movie and product reviews, as well as opinions and comments in news articles. Our results highlight the extent to which the prediction performance of these methods varies considerably across datasets. Aiming at boosting the development of this research area, we open the methods' codes and datasets used in this article, deploying them in a benchmark system, which provides an open API for accessing and comparing sentence-level sentiment analysis methods

The location of international practices: what is human rights practice?

This article opens up space to challenge state-centrism about human rights practice. To do so, it presents and critically assesses four methods that can be used to determine who and/or what counts as a part of any international practice: the agreement method, which locates a practice by referring to speech acts that define it; the contextual method, which locates a practice by referring to the actions, meanings, and intentions of practitioners; the value method, which locates a practice by identifying a value or principle that the practice reflects or instantiates; and the purpose method, which locates a practice by constructing an account of the sociopolitical reason(s) for a practice's existence. The purpose method, based on an interpretation of Rawls' constructivism, is developed, in a way that focuses on practitioners' judgement-based reasons to assign responsibility for human rights to any state or non-state actor

Ethics in the Multijurisdictional Practice of Admiralty Lawyers

In June 2002 the Commission on Multijurisdictional Practice of the American Bar Association (“ABA”) issued a report which covered a wide range of subjects including state judicial regulation and discipline of lawyers, the special problems of large firms moving lawyers around to work in branch offices, the use of in-house counsel not licensed in the state where they work, the particular problems of federal government and military lawyers practicing as part of their official duties in states where they are not licensed, as well as model rules for admission to practice on motion, for licensing of foreign legal consultants, and for admission pro hac vice in lawsuits. The focus of this Essay, however, is limited to just the activities which admiralty lawyers—and many other international lawyers—routinely engage in, which could be regarded by some courts or licensing authorities as the unauthorized practice of law. (P) ‘In general, a lawyer may not represent clients in court, or otherwise practice law within a particular state, unless the lawyer is licensed by the state to do so. By limiting law practice to those whom the state judiciary, through its admissions process, has deemed to be qualified to practice law in the state, a state government tries to ensure that lawyers who act on behalf of or give advice to clients in the state are competent and do so ethically. States give effect to restrictions through rules of professional conduct, which subject lawyers to the risk of sanction (in some states, criminal sanction) for practicing law within a state where they are not licensed, by treating such lawyers the same as laymen. Needless to say, a lawyer found by out-of-state authorities to have engaged in the unauthorized practice of law will also have many problems at home. (P) Today, every jurisdiction permits pro hac vice admission of out-of-state lawyers appearing in court or before some other tribunal/ But for transactional and counseling work, and other activities—including work done prior to commencement of a formal proceeding—there is no counterpart to pro hac vice admission

The Current State of Performance Appraisal Research and Practice: Concerns, Directions, and Implications

On the surface, it is not readily apparent how some performance appraisal research issues inform performance appraisal practice. Because performance appraisal is an applied topic, it is useful to periodically consider the current state of performance research and its relation to performance appraisal practice. This review examines the performance appraisal literature published in both academic and practitioner outlets between 1985 and 1990, briefly discusses the current state of performance appraisal practice, highlights the juxtaposition of research and practice, and suggests directions for further research